Some people say that Christmas Trees look their best in the dark but I quite liked mine with the blue-sky background. It started to rain again soon after that. In fact “pissing down with rain” would be a more accurate description of what is happening outside our windows… And, try as I might, I don’t think I can bring myself to like winter.

Feel free to tell me how wrong I am, and why. I’d like to like it, honestly, I would.

Of course once I go and write that the grass is greener we go and have an argument in the middle of the night two days in a row which makes me wonder. (It also makes me tired and grumpy, which is probably the main reason why I wonder.) But it’s the way things go, isn’t it? I go and write I don’t mean to go silent and what do I do then but go silent, buried under a pile of homework taller than myself, and before I realise it it is Christmas and I seem to need some time off the computer to wander around Totnes when it is freezing cold and bake gingerbread biscuits. Totnes, by the way, is very beautiful. It makes Exmouth look plain in comparison. Which, in a way, is another reason why I love it. Little, grey, out-of-the-way and somewhat run-down Exmouth, looking charming only if you are looking at it from the right angle.

As you probably know, Martijn finally has a job. (In Oxfordshire. But that’s another story.) As you probably also already know, we have a newly-arrived Christmas tree, and it looks great. What you might not know is that after three days of ‘shop till you drop’ with my mum (where she did most of the shopping and I did most of the dropping) we managed to stay in for three days of preparing for Christmas, and, well, Christmas. It definitely made for a good change.

Late last night was definitely my favourite moment of the whole week: the cake was baked, the chicken prepared and in the fridge, the house nearly tidy, and we were out on the street on the way towards the church. (I wanted to see what it was like.) For a moment I knew what “god’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world!” means. (I know there are people to whom this is anathema, but I think that if only more people felt all’s right with the world, more would be right with the world. I once was a Friend of the Heroes, after all. That’s the sort of thing we preached believed in.)

Now all the food has been eaten (and I have received a fair number of compliments for it), a fair bit of alcohol has been consumed, the friend we invited has gone home and Martijn is playing random selections off my 7″ collection while composing a blogpost with pen and paper (we have only one computer). And I have, to my surprise, realised and feel compelled to admit that I seem to be having the sort of time I always thought I would have when I grew up and settled down. I don’t know why most people seem to dislike growing up, around here we are finding it pretty great. As I have always said (once Architecture in Helsinki said it): the grass gets greener once we get to the finish line.

I didn’t mean to be silent. It’s just that the things I have on my mind are rather hard to say. The amount of thought that can go into teaching eight 10-to-12 year olds for an hour is mind-boggling, as is the fact that the way you handle even the simplest of the things that come up with them comes down to philosophy. Not developmental psychology, not pedagogic principles, not accumulated experience, not even blind faith — it comes down to what you think life is all about. Where do we come from? What is the essence of a good life? And why ever did we find ourselves here in the first place, anyway?

I’ve just spent an hour looking for reviews of our gigs on Google. It is not a healthy way to spend the time, I know, but sometimes you just can’t resist it. I found a couple of reviews I hadn’t come across before: one of Jens, one of the last ‘Flickers gig and a mention of the Clientele too.

[Honestly, why would anyone compare Lupe to Isobel Campbell?! I don’t see whatever it is they possibly have in common. But what to you expect from the nation that consistently uses the words ‘Sarah records’ when reviewing the Occasional Flickers? Really, if anything, they sound more Matinee or Shelflife. But then again in Greek ‘Sarah records’ seems to mean ‘indie-pop’ and ‘Pale Fountains’ equals ‘trumpets in a song or two’ — and ‘Isobel Campbell’ translates into ‘female vocalist in poppy band’. Sigh.]

And then I listened to Jens, and I missed him. I regretted never having written anything to commemorate the one year anniversary of his gig in Athens, and felt a pang for nostalgia for that old pop life of mine. In fact for a moment I missed the excitement of doing gigs so much I could cry.

But then the moment passed. Because I know that on Monday I will walk into the classroom (for the second week of school experience) and all thoughts of ‘Jens’, ‘indiepop’ and ‘gigs’ will be have long disappeared. (In fact they are already fading fast.) They will be replaced by thoughts of things like ‘soul’, ‘spirit’, ‘so much noise’, ‘growing and learning’, ‘sweet lovely smiles’ and ‘a lot of fun’. Because –did I mention?– I really do love Class 5. They’re making me think I was right to want to be a teacher. And, you know what else? Deep down, they’re more exciting than Jens.